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ActionDesignStudios writes "The upcoming release of Ubuntu, titled 'Lucid Lynx,' has just entered the beta cycle. Alongside the usual desktop and server versions, a special version has been released that is designed to run on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. This release of Ubuntu does away with the brown 'Human' Gnome theme we've all become accustomed to, replaced by a new version Canonical says is inspired by light. The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook, among others."

I really like what I see, but it is a little... counter-intuitive that they not only put the window controls on the left side of windows but put them in order of Maximize-Minimize-Close. No matter, I have everything maximized all the time anyways and on my Wind I've been using Maximus with Window-Picker-Applet.

Pure speculation, but it could be that their goal is to order the window buttons in *increasing* order of their impact on the window, so that the easiest to click button merely resizes the window rather than of taking it away or destroying it. This arguably makes more sense then the OSX interface where the easiest button to click of the three is the one that gets rid of your window.

Whatever Ubuntu's intention is (and it isn't clear they actually have one), they are pissing all over 30 years of convention that says the close button is in the corner at the top of a window. I can't think of any graphical desktop environment that didn't put the close button in either the top left or top right corner.

Aside from being convention it's predictable and convenient since its order never changes depending on if the window can be minimized and / or maximized. If there is a risk in closing a wind

I also use Awesome for that reason. It's especially nice on very large monitors because you can split a screen to have multiple windows maximized in one of several layouts rather than having to juggle them. That said, I dislike how a lot of runtimes (Java, Adobe AIR) don't work with tiling window managers so well.

Well, you see, there's this thing called the "Window List" which lets you easily switch between these windows that are maximized. Also alt tab. If I don't need to be looking at more than one window at a time, what's the point in running a program un-maximized?

Seriously, what's wrong with those people ? Do they fear that having options will confuse users (I heard that one a lot) ? "oh no, there's a button order option, I felt compelled to click on it and now I'm in existential crisis !"KDE lets you just move the buttons around with the mouse, seems much simpler to me, but what do I know.

They say it was a decision from the design team however, I suspect the decision to change the window controls has to do with the new mac guy that just joined canonical [slashdot.org]. The timing is just too convenient.

Either way it's a foot meet bullet situation. I very much suspect a lot of people to move distro over this. Yes, I know you can type in a command to fix this however the point of Ubuntu was that you could install it and go. You didn't have to dick around with it and this decision is going to force people to

There's lots of reasons to keep the close buttons on the right by default and yet Mark can't come up with one reason to move them, just a lot of nonsense about "his plans" which he doesn't want to share.

I switched to Chrome because... well, I don't know. I'm just more comfortable with it in the short time I've used it.

The nice thing about Window Picker Applet is it always keeps the close button to the right edge, so if it's the last applet on the upper panel then I can always expect the close button to be in the upper-right corner.

Maximus removes the window decoration on maximized windows and maximizes all windows windows by default (with some exceptions). Chrome, when using the GTK theme and allowing the DE to manage the decorations nests quite nicely.

I also hid all the subdirectories in the gnome menu and left just the stuff I use in the root.

I grew up using computers, but lately I've been less serious about them. Ubuntu caught me somewhere in between and it just does me right.

Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful. Very important on a small screen like the EEE701 has. I'm using it much more now than when I had the stock Linux on it.

The maximising is great on those small screens but on my normal desktop monitor I don't do this: I miss the easy drag-and-drop between windows...

Does this mean it has a new default browser [wikipedia.org]? Or that it can run old handheld games [wikipedia.org]? Unlike the last few animal nicknames for Ubuntu releases (Hardy Heron, Intrepid Ibex, Jaunty Jackalope, Karmic Koala), this name is already taken by tech products with at least a cult following. Or is it a way to force Apple to step away from the big cat naming scheme for Mac OS X 10.7?

...and the difference between 9.10 & 10.04 Beta are the window buttons, which are now on the top left corner.
Seriously, there's a major flame war on this in the "Ubuntu Blogosphere". Don't these these bloggers have anything else to do, other than obsess over the placement of window buttons? (Which can be very easily reverted back to original way)

Don't these these bloggers have anything else to do, other than obsess over the placement of window buttons?

Ubuntu is the mainstream Linux GUI and it uses windows to display applications. The way in which windows are controlled matters a great deal. As Shuttleworth says it's not a democracy and he can choose, but all software has users and if they're not convinced that changes are made for the best reasons then of course they're going to do what they're allowed to do: talk about it.

This change hasn't been justified on any grounds. It puts the 'Close' button near the 'File' menu and other drop-downs which makes it easier to misclick and close applications. It's not a common layout across WIMP GUIs. It's an unnecessary and pointless variation on what people expect.

(Which can be very easily reverted back to original way)

Very easily? So it's a multichoice box somewhere in the GUI then?

The non-easy solution was to modify or make a gconf key. Is that really the easy way of doing it?

This change hasn't been justified on any grounds. It puts the 'Close' button near the 'File' menu and other drop-downs which makes it easier to misclick and close applications. It's not a common layout across WIMP GUIs. It's an unnecessary and pointless variation on what people expect.

That looks pretty annoying and is sure to confuse any new users I try to migrate from Windows or an earlier version of Ubuntu. I hope debian isn't planning something similar, because this might be enough to make me switch

...right now. I like it fine, though some changes (moving windows controls to the left side, took a bit of getting used to. The purple scheme sucks but is easy enough to change. There is still a problem with running a fixed IP, or at least there is some trick to making it work properly that I haven't learned yet. It does seem to boot a bit faster, but fast boot times are of little importance to someone who typically runs his computer 24/7.
So far, I see no significant improvements, but more importantly, no noticeable degradations, yet.

Are you telling me that right-clicking on the networkmanager icon in the panel, selecting edit connections, selecting your network connection, hitting Edit and then and switching to the IPV4 Settings tab, changing Method from DHCP to Manual and the pressing Add and entering your ip Address, Netmask and Gateway and filling in DNS servers doesn't work? like it has for the past 2 years?

I'm a big fan of Ubuntu, and I mostly run Ubuntu Server or Debian machines for my personal desktop usage. However, their habit of catastrophically breaking important features in their releases is really getting on my nerves. Wi-fi support, for example, has been fixed and re-broken repeatedly over the past few years. I think that this release takes the cake when it comes to breaking existing functionality, though. The first two known issues listed for 10.04:

#Because of the new alternatives system used for nvidia driver packages, the nvidia installer from NVIDIA's website currently doesn't work.
#The fglrx binary driver for ATI video chipsets does not yet support the X server in Lucid. As a workaround, users should use the open source -ati driver instead.

Both of these are pretty much show-stoppers, especially the ATI issue. Is a month long enough to sort out a problem this serious?

If the ATI driver issue has something to do with x.org updates, why would Ubuntu include a version of x.org in their release that doesn't work with ATI cards? Regardless of where the finger-pointing leads, there is no reason for an Ubuntu release to have this issue, if it didn't have the issue before. If the newer x.org is the issue, ship the old one. If the newer fglrx is the issue, ship the old one. If an underlying change in the OS is the issue, they fucked up.

The focus for the new x.org is to provide new features such as the free drivers that ATI has failed to adequately support. Ubuntu would only show weakness in allowing proprietary drivers to determine their progress.

why would Ubuntu include a version of x.org in their release that doesn't work with ATI cards?

It does work with ATI cards, it just doesn't work with the closed-source ATI drivers. This does mean no acceleration on HD 5000 cards, and somewhat slower acceleration on other ATI cards, but it does work. The alternative would be either sticking with an older version of X (thereby foregoing important bug fixes and performance enhancements), or shipping two X servers (which would be possible, but would be a serious support headache, particularly as this is a long-term support release).

The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook

Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?

Ubuntu provides not just the Linux operating system but also the package of applications that they deem people may find useful. Applications which provide social networking integration will be put to use for a lot of people so they are included.

Because "operating system" means more than you think it means. It ships with a desktop manager which allows email, IM, and other communication services to access the dock. That's what "integrates" means.

If you search the net a little there are people saying it can be made to work, but I can't get the authentication to work, although I can make OD users appear in the user database with some work (i.e. I made LDAP work just not kerberos).

As I have already commented [slashdot.org], I think this is a horrible idea. Windows is not going to change its window buttons, I have to use Windows, and I dread this change. And, if you have to put the buttons on the left, the most-commonly-used button (the Close button) should be in the left corner, so that in the common case where I have a maximized window, it's easier to hit.

I went ahead and read through Mark Shuttleworth's comments about the bug. In summary: they want to try some new cool stuff, they want to shake things up and not be bound by the past, they have some ideas (not described) for ways to use the right-hand side of the menu bar. (He was even talking about moving the scroll bar away from the right side of the window, on the grounds that few people use it, and scroll wheels/touchscreen interfaces are becoming the big new thing. This doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either.) They are shipping the beta like this to see what actual reactions are to this idea.

I went ahead and listened to the podcast [ubuntu-uk.org] also (the relevant bit starts around 0:39 into the podcast). Ivanka Majic said many things, but IMHO did not adequately explain why they think this is a good idea. Some vague comments about how they are actually testing things. She said many commendable things, such as talking about how new users can find it really hard to even understand just what Ubuntu is. And she said something that sounded like her department was behind the "papercuts" project, of which I firmly approve. But if you are trying to understand what the heck is going on with those crazy buttons, you can skip the podcast.

So, if (like me) you dread these new buttons, the best thing you could possibly do is to actually get a copy of the Ubuntu beta and try it out; then post, not just opinions, but informed opinions supported by personal experience. "I tried to click on the Edit menu and closed my window" (if that actually happens to you) should be much more persuasive than "I looked at your screen shot and I can already tell I hate it".

(He was even talking about moving the scroll bar away from the right side of the window, on the grounds that few people use it, and scroll wheels/touchscreen interfaces are becoming the big new thing. This doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either.)

Huh. Now that, I find interesting. It's very rare that I use the scrollbar widgets to do actual scrolling. But I'd miss the visual cue on where I am in the document and how much of it I'm seeing.

I know this is going to seem like trolling, but humour me here. What is it, that people honestly see in this distribution?

I used both Jaunty and Intrepid; Jaunty for probably two months. I've been using Linux for 15 years now, and I honestly feel that Ubuntu was, without any hyperbole, the single worst Linux distribution that I've ever seen. I absolutely hated it.

Why? Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually, kernel panics from nVidia drivers, and the completely non-orthagonal design, with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system, were the three main reasons. I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't. I generally use Ratpoison in either Linux or FreeBSD.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart, and the usual Debian tendency to change absolutely everything they can, purely for the hell of it, such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work. Hard drives get mounted some other way, that I wasn't able to find. Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation, leading to the infamous "black screen of death." I honestly felt that the overall design was seriously less transparent than Windows; and if I started really trying to change things, the entire system very rapidly started to fall apart.

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

After Redhat mismanaged the discontinuation of RedHat Linux in favor of an enterprise focus, many people started fishing around for a replacement default Linux. (Yes, I know Redhat still has a desktop product, but the impression people got was that Redhat was going totally corporate.)

Add to that the legendary (even promised) instability of Fedora, which is explicitly and without apology presented as a testing vehicle.

In comes Ubuntu with the Circle of Friends [underconsideration.com] imagery, the Ubuntu code of conduct [ubuntu.com], the word ubuntu [wikipedia.org] itself ("open and available to others"), and the promise of "Linux for Human Beings".

The rapid growth of Ubuntu to #1 on Distrowatch [distrowatch.com] was propelled by evangelism done by the same power users whose opinions are apparently not worth being listened to anymore.

At the moment I run Ubuntu out of inertia - I installed it once at some point in the past and have just gone with the updates.

My Linux box is essentially a PC that became obsolete when I bought a laptop. I don't use it for much, just gaming with Wine (because I can shove a decent graphics card into it) and light browsing in Firefox whilst gaming.

Before I tried Ubuntu, I had tried just about every distro in the hopes of finding one that just installed and ran, by which I mean hardware stuff like: could run m

I like Ubuntu. I really like Gnome, so I don't feel like I have to tear it out. Most things just work for me -- including 5.1 sound --, and though some things don't, I can't imagine any other distribution (or OS, for that matter) not having its own share of issues. I don't care what init mechanism is used as long as things are running after booting. Similarly, I don't really care how partitions are mounted as long as they are, in fact, mounted. I guess I'm a luser these days. Many of the decisions that anno

I'm a long time unix user. The early releases of ubuntu were just beautiful, i ran them as they came (defaults were sane).

The last releases were buggy, full of stupid changes (tomboy and mono, insane default desktop options). I have a long gconf list now which i apply on a new install. They seem to be able to break features with every release. They also change default applications with every release (im, torrent client, etc.... new default apps don't have all of the features the older ones had).

The short answer? Jaunty was the first Linux distribution which, out-of-the-box, wasn't pure shit on a modern laptop. Now, admittedly Ubuntu may not be unique in that sense... I guess I could try Fedora again. No, wait, I couldn't.

I don't like Gnome functionally, aesthetically, or philosophically, but since the only really reasonable alternative right now is KDE4, I'm seeing it as the lesser of two evils...

OK disclaimer first. I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen a screen shot yet. I haven't read anything yet. I'm still running 9.04.

But I can absolutely see reasons to support this.

I recently enabled the Group and Tab Windows in Compiz.I was staggered by the functionality and possibilities, but frustrated by the usability. Right click on title bar? Nothing. Anything in the Windowing menu (Top left under icon)? Err, nope. AFAICT, the only way to make any use of it is knowing the key stroke combos. It's like learning all over again! And this is the only way to control the GUI itself! No integration into the Windowing UI?

So, from my perspective, you need a way to control the newer MDI technologies, and if they stick it in the window bar where _/[]/X was, stick that same _/[]/X wherever you want.

Eye candy will definitely win some converts. If it's an opportunity for Ubuntu to lead and someone else to react, then what have you got to lose?

This is possibly more insightful than it seems. Canonical seem to be pushing more and more in their own direction, rather than anything the Ubuntu community does. This is good for Ubuntu, but potentially bad for users as more and more changes are made to the GNOME interface, the browser etc etc.

I think that the dream of a mainstream community-based OS is dead now.

At least Fedora does not have these delusions of grandeur. It is a testbed for Red Hat, I'm OK with that. I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive. Is it too much to ask?

I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive.

Here, here. Glad to see someone else who doesn't give a shit that an "OS be tightly integrated with/for social networking"? Why is staring at our electronic bellybuttons so frikkin' important??? Could we be more self-absorbed, here on Planet Hollywood? {grumble grumble... slinks back off to cave...}

I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive.

Here, here. Glad to see someone else who doesn't give a shit that an "OS be tightly integrated with/for social networking"? Why is staring at our electronic bellybuttons so frikkin' important??? Could we be more self-absorbed, here on Planet Hollywood? {grumble grumble... slinks back off to cave...}

Because in order of x sells from greatest to lowest, it is Sex, Vanity, then Convenience. Social Networking provides all three.

Sadly they do. You can't install without a graphical desktop for example. What the heck is that all about? We used to laugh at NT for that. A SERVER wasting resources displaying a graphical login nobody will ever see! Of course with Fedora having a use by date shorter than some cheese you would have to be kinda daft to put Fedora on a server anyway.

One example: So after months and months of users bitching and moaning about the loss of the

Unlike Ubuntu, Fedora doesn't automatically install any of the un-free codecs you need and getting the drivers for ATI or nVidia cards is strictly up to you. And, I might add, although Fedora started out with a six month release cycle, it's more like nine now.

OMGZZZ!!! Lucid Lynx enters beta!!!
is slashdot having a slow news day today?

Ubuntu enters beta every six months. It's news for those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu.

Just because a story appears on Slashdot front page does not mean that you have to click "Read More" and then have to come up with something to comment. Go ahead and skip an article if you don't find it interesting. No seriously, go ahead. No one is going to stop you. You won't get an achievement saying "Did not comment on articlezor!".

Just because a story appears on Slashdot front page does not mean that you have to click "Read More" and then have to come up with something to comment. Go ahead and skip an article if you don't find it interesting. No seriously, go ahead. No one is going to stop you. You won't get an achievement saying "Did not comment on articlezor!"

Even better, click the - button next to the topic name and choose a reason that you did so ("stupid" is on the list). If enough people do so, the article will fall far enough